1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of integrated circuits (IC). More specifically, the present invention relates to on-chip bus.
2. Background Information
Computer system designers have long recognized the benefits of having standardized system buses. Examples of such buses include the S-bus developed by Sun Microsystems of Mountain View, CA for SPARC based workstations, and Peripheral Component Interface (PCI) bus developed by the PCI Special Interest Group (SIG) of Hillsboro, OR, for Intel Architecture based personal computers. In each of these cases, the existence of a standardized system bus enables numerous interoperable peripherals to be developed by different manufacturers, enriching the functionality and choices available for the system purchasers.
However, the practice has not been adopted by microprocessor or application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designers. Virtually all on-chip buses known in the art are proprietary, and intended for a specific processor or ASIC family. As time-to-market become increasingly critical, more and more on-chip function blocks are designed for multiple processor and/or ASIC families. Thus, a need exists for a scalable processor independent bus.